title: An improved kidney dissociation and reaggregation culture system results in nephrons arranged organotypically around a single collecting duct system.
abstract: Methods for constructing engineered "tissues" from simple suspensions of cells are valuable for investigations into basic developmental biology and for tissue engineering. We recently published a method for producing embryonic renal tissues from suspensions of embryonic mouse renal cells. This method reproduced the anatomies and differentiation states of nephrons and stroma very well; it had the limitation, however, that what would, in normal development, be a single, highly branched collecting duct tree leading to a ureter developed, in the engineered system, as a multitude of very small collecting duct trees. These were isolated from each other and therefore would not be effective for draining urine to a common exit, were the tissue to be supplied with blood and physiologically active. Here, we report an improvement on the original method; it results in the formation of nephrons arranged around one single collecting duct tree as would happen in a normal kidney.
authors.affiliation: University of Edinburgh Centre for Integrative Physiology, UK.
authors.forename: Veronika
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ganeva
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Unbekandt
authors.forename: Jamie A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Davies
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D007685:Kidney Tubules, Collecting / Q000166:cytology* / Q000196:embryology*; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000166:cytology / Q000196:embryology; D051379:Mice; D046509:Tissue Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D014513:Ureter / Q000166:cytology / Q000196:embryology